"A
leader is an individual (or, rarely, a set of individuals) who
significantly affects the thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors of a
significant number of individuals. Most acknowledged leaders are
"direct." They address their public face-to-face. But I have called
attention to an unrecognized phenomenon: indirect leadership. In this
variety of leading, individuals exert impact through the works that
they create.

Whether direct or indirect, leaders fashion stories:
principally stories of identity. It is important that a leader be a
good storyteller, but equally crucial that the leader embody that story
in his or her life. When a leader tells stories to experts, the stories
can be quite sophisticated; but when the leader is dealing with a
diverse, heterogeneous group, the story must be sufficiently elemental
to be understood by the untutored, or 'unschooled,' mind."

Which does your school or district need?

Catalytic Questions:

In
what ways is your communication style growing to meet the needs of your
school or district? Will the way you communicate change in the future
or remain the same?

What problems are you working on that would benefit from empowering someone else to solve it?

Are
you current hiring practices bringing in the most talented candidates?
Are there alternatives to you current hiring practices that might
improve your results?

How might you look to the past to find new approaches to your current issues?

In what ways might you combine ideas from outside of education to develop new and innovative ideas in education?

How might you encourage and empower your staff to share their ideas?

Which sort of leadership will help you reach your goals, more of the same or lateral or indirect leadership?

2 Comments

Great post. Sadly, I work with a conventional leader who isn't even good at that. To me, the most important people in the school are the students (customers), then teachers, and the importance slowly decreases as you move up. When you think of the process that way, administrators should be facilitators of a culture of learning, not rule-makers. Too much emphasis on compliance, not enough on collaboration.

Michael, I strongly agree that we need to emphasize collaboration. I have been thinking about how many activities teachers do alone that can be turned into opportunities for collaboration. Beyond PLCs, there is Co-planning/Co-teaching, coaching, etc. We need to build in more collaboration opportunities.